Aristotle Circle

Building and integrating administrative, employee and client facing systems

Date: April 2015Client: Aristotle Circle

Background

Founded in 2008, Aristotle Circle has provided admissions counseling, test preparation and tutoring for students by a mixture of peer tutors and highly trained professionals.

We worked with Aristotle Circle to build out a new web-based application that would have different modules for Parents, Tutors and Aristotle Circle Staff. Having successfully matched over 5,000 students with tutors, Aristotles management system and website apps were feeling the strain of their rapidly growing business.

Our Approach

Everything began with face to face sessions that helped us work through and understand
Aristiotle’s complex business needs. Throughout those meetings we discussed the immediate business requirements as well as longer term goals so that the system we built could facilitate both current and future growth.

Simultaneously, we started creating extensive documentation for the entire system that would serve as a blueprint for all the various aspects of design and development.

Designing the User Experience and User Interface

Wireframes let us iterate on the different layouts of the application to find the best solutions. It also served as an invaluable tool for working through and understanding the multitude of different use case scenarios and complex processes involved in the multifaceted system.

For our UX and Design team the guiding philosophy was clean and simple. Let the content shine and encourage interaction. We created a modern interface that plays off their existing branding while also focusing on the design of UI elements that would enable ease of use.

The final product consists of four different yet integrated systems. Aristotle Circle’s Internal System is the mothership, allowing employees to manage the extensive roster of Tutors, Clients and REAs as well as all their related business needs. There are also three separate web applications that let Regional Area Advisors, Clients and Tutors each log in to manage their day to day.

From design through development, Aristotle Circle’s complex business needs gave us fresh challenges that were very exciting to work on for our entire team. The system is now used by thousands of tutors, students, parents and Aristotle employees across the country. We continue to work with Aristotle Circle on new functionality and expanding access to mobile devices with an iPhone app for Tutors.